The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for ripping open cigarette cartons, packs, and individual cigarettes in preparation for reclaiming the tobacco. Because of inconsistencies in quantities of tobacco in the stream from which the cigarettes are manufactured, some cigarettes are produced which contain less or more tobacco than the desired amount, and hence are not acceptable as consumer products. For this reason, and because of other manufacturing processes that cause cigarettes or their packaging to be below the desired standards, some cigarettes are rejected for sale to the consumer.
Also, in the tobacco industry, cigarette packages and cartons containing usable tobacco are returned because the shelf-life may have been greater than that advised by the supplier.
A sizable amount of tobacco (an expensive commodity) must be destroyed unless it can be reclaimed. The usual method of destruction is by incineration. That method causes great loss of valuable quantities of tobacco which in the interests of economy should be reclaimed.
The present invention affords a reliable and effective way of breaking open the carton, the packs, and the cigarette wrappers so that the tobacco contents can be reused.
Heretofore, on the whole, packs, cartons, and cigarettes have been opened separately and the tobacco removed by manual labor, a time-consuming, expensive, and tedious means of reclaiming the tobacco. Another method sometimes used was to thoroughly soak the packages, cartons, and tobacco in water and to then rotate the mass in a sieve-like drum. During this process, the paper, filters, and tobacco would separate and form into ball-like clumps. The tobacco filler was recovered by selectively hand-removing it from the other clumped materials.
Several proposals have involved shredding the cigarettes and subsequently recovering the tobacco from the shreds. These suffer the disadvantage that the tobacco is fragmented excessively thereby damaging its filling power on subsequent recycle. Also, shredding the tobacco and its packaging into similarly sized pieces makes it more difficult to achieve separation.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,757,799 deals with the reclamation of tobacco from cigarettes by first radially compressing the tobacco in the cigarette wrapper and subsequently blowing the compressed tobacco out of the wrapper.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,103,222 discloses a process by which the cigarette paper is slit, the filter held by pins, and the cigarette moved past an air station where air blows the tobacco out from the cigarette wrapper.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,164,548 involves an apparatus for separating heavy and light particles (particularly stems and leaf material) from each other in a tower-type separator, into which the materials are thrown vertically at high velocity across a rising current of air. The lighter particles float upward in the tower and pass from it into a tangential separator. The heavier materials fall onto a vibrating screen and exit through a discharge tube.